So I’ll admit I’m a gadget person, I’m always craving the latest toy or dingus, but this time it wasn’t me who wanted to upgrade. For the longest time now I’ve had a venerable Motorola StarTac that was fine for my mobile phoning needs. But alas, everything must come to an end, and the transmitter or somewhatever piece of internal circuitry went kaput. I’m actually a little suspicious of Verizon in general, because I had taken the StarTac in last week for them to look at it, they upgraded the firmware and handed it back to me and it was fine… It wasn’t. The next week I took it back, they did a more thourough inspection, and lo and behold, a busted phone. They told me it would be 150 dollars to fix it. So they went and told me to look for a new phone. I went to look at the choices, and much to my surprise, and much to my dismay, they had removed the StarTac display that had greeted mobile phone users for years. “Discontinued,” they told me. They had them for sale for 50 dollars when I took the phone in the first time.

Bottom line, if they had really inspected my phone the first time, I would only be out 50 bucks (the reduced price of the remaining StarTacs). Instead, I’m out $200, and all the accessories (the car charger, the desk charger, the hands-free kit, the blender attachment). I don’t think you can even get a blender attachment for the new phone.